A Fresh New Look

I was very excited when I found out that I was going to be in China during the great Away Day project. The British embassy took on a big job of redoing the Memorial garden, big playground, preschool playground, preschool room and building a chicken coop and donating 30 chickens! It was a lot of fun to watch all the progress of the project happening over the course of a couple of weeks before the big final teams arrived. Here are a few pictures of the progress ( I will be posting the rest on FB)


While a piece of me was very sad to see some of the memories and work we did 3 summers ago to the preschool room leave. I was thankful to have the time to take my last pictures and in a weird way say "goodbye". This wall was becoming very weak and for safety reasons it needed to come down and be rebuilt and now seeing the new wall it is amazing and strong.

Handprints of preschoolers over the past 3 years at New Hope

The door painted by the talented Stephanie Hwang

Handprints of just a handful of the preschool teachers over the past 3 years with our trip dates.

This wall will forever be my favorite wall ever! Created by Stephanie Hwang, Callie Huseman and myself in 2013 using the kids hand and foot prints to create a garden scene.

New wall going up

The wall is now much taller which is great because it will help with distractions

My favorite thing was the quote from the old wall was repainted on and Rob asked me to give it the handprint touch :) So my last morning several of the kiddos hands became "apples" in the tree.

Next up the big playground- I didn't get a great before picture with all the old things in an overview picture. 

Out with the old swing set and ready to start 

Chicken Coop- Oh my goodness I just loved this project! And the kids are loving the chickens as well.

Preschool Playground- This project had a lot of help from our handy preschoolers :)

Memorial Garden: This is a very special place before it was outdated and held the names of kids that had passed away in the Beijing unit now it is cherry and bright and holds the memories of all 900 kids from all the units that were loved and comforted till it was time for them to pass into Jesus's arms. This wall holds names of kids I had the honor of meeting and many that I read about through newsletters but one thing I know for sure is that they had the top care and love up till the very end and they are now forever healed.

That wraps up the amazing work done by the British Embassy to help support New Hope. I can't wait to watch years worth of memories take place at all the new projects.

~Stephanie